PELOSI: Lifetime commitment to politics, Democrats

2006-11-08 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- Even some of Rep. Nancy Pelosi's closest political allies would never have predicted her rise to national political stardom.

John Burton, the former congressman and state Senate president, remembered being summoned in early 1987 to the Washington deathbed of his sister-in-law, Rep. Sala Burton, the widow of legendary congressman Phil Burton.

"They told me Sala wanted Nancy to run for her seat" in a special election that would be called when she died, John Burton said. "I thought they meant Nancy Walker," a member of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, and not Pelosi, then little known outside of Democratic Party circles.

John Burton was surprised and a little skeptical when he learned Sala Burton meant Pelosi, the former state Democratic chairman noted for her fundraising prowess but untested as a candidate.

"I thought Sala would say she wanted Nancy because of friendship, but she talked about Nancy's talent and commitment to Democratic causes," he remembered.

And now the 66-year-old Pelosi is primed to become the first Californian and the first woman elected speaker of the House, one of the nation's most powerful offices, and second in line of presidential succession.

"Here it is, and everything Sala said Nancy had she has in spades," said Burton, who is a close Pelosi adviser.

The novice candidate Pelosi won a raucous 14-candidate special election in June 1987 to fill Sala Burton's seat and has been re-elected in landslides ever since. Looking back on her life story, it probably is little surprise that she has displayed a lifetime commitment to politics and the Democratic Party.

The family's business was politics, centered on the D'Alesandro home on Albemarle Street in Baltimore's Little Italy. Depression times were tough. Family members remember that wood scavenged from demolished buildings was piled up in front of the D'Alesandro house for the poor to take home to burn for heat. And hungry strangers often ate for free in the family's kitchen.

The elder D'Alesandro kept an office in the front room, where young Nancy at times helped constituents in search of help.

"We all took turns at the desk," recalled Pelosi's brother, Thomas D'Alesandro III, known as "Young Tommy," who served as Baltimore mayor in the late 1960s. "My mother was really the politician in the family, and Nancy was the apple of her eye. She takes after her. She's tough."

Pelosi attended Trinity College in Washington, D.C., where she watched President John F. Kennedy's inaugural. She met San Franciscan Paul Pelosi, who was attending Washington's Georgetown University. They married in 1963, moved to New York and had five children in six years.

Democratic politics was an obsession for the young mother. Pelosi's daughter, Christine, said one of her first memories is at age 2 going door to door with her mother in 1968 canvassing for Democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey.

In 1969, Paul Pelosi moved the family back to his home of San Francisco and became a wealthy businessman.

Nancy Pelosi dived into Democratic activities as a volunteer and started to raise money for the party and candidates, something friends and critics agree she excels at.

Pelosi eventually served on the Democratic National Committee and in the early 1980s was the state party chairwoman. She also chaired the host committee for the 1984 Democratic national convention at San Francisco's Moscone Center.

After winning her seat in 1987 with the backing of the city's Democratic establishment, Pelosi never looked back. Pelosi entered leadership when she was elected by the Democratic caucus in 2000 as the first woman to serve as whip (the No. 2 post in the minority party), in 2002 as minority leader, and -- expected in party elections next week -- now as speaker.